The Journey in Despair
Hetty was too ill through the rest of that day for any questions to be
addressed to her—too ill even to think with any distinctness of the
evils that were to come. She only felt that all her hope was crushed,
and that instead of having found a refuge she had only reached the
borders of a new wilderness where no goal lay before her. The
sensations of bodily sickness, in a comfortable bed, and with the
tendance of the good-natured landlady, made a sort of respite for her;
such a respite as there is in the faint weariness which obliges a man
to throw himself on the sand instead of toiling onward under the
scorching sun.
But when sleep and rest had brought back the strength necessary for the
keenness of mental suffering—when she lay the next morning looking at
the growing light which was like a cruel task-master returning to urge
from her a fresh round of hated hopeless labour—she began to think what
course she must take, to remember that all her money was gone, to look
at the prospect of further wandering among strangers with the new
clearness shed on it by the experience of her journey to Windsor. But
which way could she turn? It was impossible for her to enter into any
service, even if she could obtain it. There was nothing but immediate
beggary before her. She thought of a young woman who had been found
against the church wall at Hayslope one Sunday, nearly dead with cold
and hunger—a tiny infant in her arms. The woman was rescued and taken
to the parish. “The parish!” You can perhaps hardly understand the
effect of that word on a mind like Hetty’s, brought up among people who
were somewhat hard in their feelings even towards poverty, who lived
among the fields, and had little pity for want and rags as a cruel
inevitable fate such as they sometimes seem in cities, but held them a
mark of idleness and vice—and it was idleness and vice that brought
burdens on the parish. To Hetty the “parish” was next to the prison in
obloquy, and to ask anything of strangers—to beg—lay in the same
far-off hideous region of intolerable shame that Hetty had all her life
thought it impossible she could ever come near. But now the remembrance
of that wretched woman whom she had seen herself, on her way from
church, being carried into Joshua Rann’s, came back upon her with the
new terrible sense that there was very little now to divide _her_ from
the same lot. And the dread of bodily hardship mingled with the dread
of shame; for Hetty had the luxurious nature of a round soft-coated pet
animal.
How she yearned to be back in her safe home again, cherished and cared
for as she had always been! Her aunt’s scolding about trifles would
have been music to her ears now; she longed for it; she used to hear it
in a time when she had only trifles to hide. Could she be the same
Hetty that used to make up the butter in the dairy with the Guelder
roses peeping in at the window—she, a runaway whom her friends would
not open their doors to again, lying in this strange bed, with the
knowledge that she had no money to pay for what she received, and must
offer those strangers some of the clothes in her basket? It was then
she thought of her locket and ear-rings, and seeing her pocket lie
near, she reached it and spread the contents on the bed before her.
There were the locket and ear-rings in the little velvet-lined boxes,
and with them there was a beautiful silver thimble which Adam had
bought her, the words “Remember me” making the ornament of the border;
a steel purse, with her one shilling in it; and a small red-leather
case, fastening with a strap. Those beautiful little ear-rings, with
their delicate pearls and garnet, that she had tried in her ears with
such longing in the bright sunshine on the 30th of July! She had no
longing to put them in her ears now: her head with its dark rings of
hair lay back languidly on the pillow, and the sadness that rested
about her brow and eyes was something too hard for regretful memory.
Yet she put her hands up to her ears: it was because there were some
thin gold rings in them, which were also worth a little money. Yes, she
could surely get some money for her ornaments: those Arthur had given
her must have cost a great deal of money. The landlord and landlady had
been good to her; perhaps they would help her to get the money for
these things.
But this money would not keep her long. What should she do when it was
gone? Where should she go? The horrible thought of want and beggary
drove her once to think she would go back to her uncle and aunt and ask
them to forgive her and have pity on her. But she shrank from that idea
again, as she might have shrunk from scorching metal. She could never
endure that shame before her uncle and aunt, before Mary Burge, and the
servants at the Chase, and the people at Broxton, and everybody who
knew her. They should never know what had happened to her. What _could_
she do? She would go away from Windsor—travel again as she had done the
last week, and get among the flat green fields with the high hedges
round them, where nobody could see her or know her; and there, perhaps,
when there was nothing else she could do, she should get courage to
drown herself in some pond like that in the Scantlands. Yes, she would
get away from Windsor as soon as possible: she didn’t like these people
at the inn to know about her, to know that she had come to look for
Captain Donnithorne. She must think of some reason to tell them why she
had asked for him.
With this thought she began to put the things back into her pocket,
meaning to get up and dress before the landlady came to her. She had
her hand on the red-leather case, when it occurred to her that there
might be something in this case which she had forgotten—something worth
selling; for without knowing what she should do with her life, she
craved the means of living as long as possible; and when we desire
eagerly to find something, we are apt to search for it in hopeless
places. No, there was nothing but common needles and pins, and dried
tulip-petals between the paper leaves where she had written down her
little money-accounts. But on one of these leaves there was a name,
which, often as she had seen it before, now flashed on Hetty’s mind
like a newly discovered message. The name was—_Dinah Morris,
Snowfield_. There was a text above it, written, as well as the name, by
Dinah’s own hand with a little pencil, one evening that they were
sitting together and Hetty happened to have the red case lying open
before her. Hetty did not read the text now: she was only arrested by
the name. Now, for the first time, she remembered without indifference
the affectionate kindness Dinah had shown her, and those words of Dinah
in the bed-chamber—that Hetty must think of her as a friend in trouble.
Suppose she were to go to Dinah, and ask her to help her? Dinah did not
think about things as other people did. She was a mystery to Hetty, but
Hetty knew she was always kind. She couldn’t imagine Dinah’s face
turning away from her in dark reproof or scorn, Dinah’s voice willingly
speaking ill of her, or rejoicing in her misery as a punishment. Dinah
did not seem to belong to that world of Hetty’s, whose glance she
dreaded like scorching fire. But even to her Hetty shrank from
beseeching and confession. She could not prevail on herself to say, “I
will go to Dinah”: she only thought of that as a possible alternative,
if she had not courage for death.
The good landlady was amazed when she saw Hetty come downstairs soon
after herself, neatly dressed, and looking resolutely self-possessed.
Hetty told her she was quite well this morning. She had only been very
tired and overcome with her journey, for she had come a long way to ask
about her brother, who had run away, and they thought he was gone for a
soldier, and Captain Donnithorne might know, for he had been very kind
to her brother once. It was a lame story, and the landlady looked
doubtfully at Hetty as she told it; but there was a resolute air of
self-reliance about her this morning, so different from the helpless
prostration of yesterday, that the landlady hardly knew how to make a
remark that might seem like prying into other people’s affairs. She
only invited her to sit down to breakfast with them, and in the course
of it Hetty brought out her ear-rings and locket, and asked the
landlord if he could help her to get money for them. Her journey, she
said, had cost her much more than she expected, and now she had no
money to get back to her friends, which she wanted to do at once.
It was not the first time the landlady had seen the ornaments, for she
had examined the contents of Hetty’s pocket yesterday, and she and her
husband had discussed the fact of a country girl having these beautiful
things, with a stronger conviction than ever that Hetty had been
miserably deluded by the fine young officer.
“Well,” said the landlord, when Hetty had spread the precious trifles
before him, “we might take ’em to the jeweller’s shop, for there’s one
not far off; but Lord bless you, they wouldn’t give you a quarter o’
what the things are worth. And you wouldn’t like to part with ’em?” he
added, looking at her inquiringly.
“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Hetty, hastily, “so as I can get money to go
back.”
“And they might think the things were stolen, as you wanted to sell
’em,” he went on, “for it isn’t usual for a young woman like you to
have fine jew’llery like that.”
The blood rushed to Hetty’s face with anger. “I belong to respectable
folks,” she said; “I’m not a thief.”
“No, that you aren’t, I’ll be bound,” said the landlady; “and you’d no
call to say that,” looking indignantly at her husband. “The things were
gev to her: that’s plain enough to be seen.”
“I didn’t mean as I thought so,” said the husband, apologetically, “but
I said it was what the jeweller might think, and so he wouldn’t be
offering much money for ’em.”
“Well,” said the wife, “suppose you were to advance some money on the
things yourself, and then if she liked to redeem ’em when she got home,
she could. But if we heard nothing from her after two months, we might
do as we liked with ’em.”
I will not say that in this accommodating proposition the landlady had
no regard whatever to the possible reward of her good nature in the
ultimate possession of the locket and ear-rings: indeed, the effect
they would have in that case on the mind of the grocer’s wife had
presented itself with remarkable vividness to her rapid imagination.
The landlord took up the ornaments and pushed out his lips in a
meditative manner. He wished Hetty well, doubtless; but pray, how many
of your well-wishers would decline to make a little gain out of you?
Your landlady is sincerely affected at parting with you, respects you
highly, and will really rejoice if any one else is generous to you; but
at the same time she hands you a bill by which she gains as high a
percentage as possible.
“How much money do you want to get home with, young woman?” said the
well-wisher, at length.
“Three guineas,” answered Hetty, fixing on the sum she set out with,
for want of any other standard, and afraid of asking too much.
“Well, I’ve no objections to advance you three guineas,” said the
landlord; “and if you like to send it me back and get the jewellery
again, you can, you know. The Green Man isn’t going to run away.”
“Oh yes, I’ll be very glad if you’ll give me that,” said Hetty,
relieved at the thought that she would not have to go to the jeweller’s
and be stared at and questioned.
“But if you want the things again, you’ll write before long,” said the
landlady, “because when two months are up, we shall make up our minds
as you don’t want ’em.”
“Yes,” said Hetty indifferently.
The husband and wife were equally content with this arrangement. The
husband thought, if the ornaments were not redeemed, he could make a
good thing of it by taking them to London and selling them. The wife
thought she would coax the good man into letting her keep them. And
they were accommodating Hetty, poor thing—a pretty, respectable-looking
young woman, apparently in a sad case. They declined to take anything
for her food and bed: she was quite welcome. And at eleven o’clock
Hetty said “Good-bye” to them with the same quiet, resolute air she had
worn all the morning, mounting the coach that was to take her twenty
miles back along the way she had come.
There is a strength of self-possession which is the sign that the last
hope has departed. Despair no more leans on others than perfect
contentment, and in despair pride ceases to be counteracted by the
sense of dependence.
Hetty felt that no one could deliver her from the evils that would make
life hateful to her; and no one, she said to herself, should ever know
her misery and humiliation. No; she would not confess even to Dinah.
She would wander out of sight, and drown herself where her body would
never be found, and no one should know what had become of her.
When she got off this coach, she began to walk again, and take cheap
rides in carts, and get cheap meals, going on and on without distinct
purpose, yet strangely, by some fascination, taking the way she had
come, though she was determined not to go back to her own country.
Perhaps it was because she had fixed her mind on the grassy
Warwickshire fields, with the bushy tree-studded hedgerows that made a
hiding-place even in this leafless season. She went more slowly than
she came, often getting over the stiles and sitting for hours under the
hedgerows, looking before her with blank, beautiful eyes; fancying
herself at the edge of a hidden pool, low down, like that in the
Scantlands; wondering if it were very painful to be drowned, and if
there would be anything worse after death than what she dreaded in
life. Religious doctrines had taken no hold on Hetty’s mind. She was
one of those numerous people who have had godfathers and godmothers,
learned their catechism, been confirmed, and gone to church every
Sunday, and yet, for any practical result of strength in life, or trust
in death, have never appropriated a single Christian idea or Christian
feeling. You would misunderstand her thoughts during these wretched
days, if you imagined that they were influenced either by religious
fears or religious hopes.
She chose to go to Stratford-on-Avon again, where she had gone before
by mistake, for she remembered some grassy fields on her former way
towards it—fields among which she thought she might find just the sort
of pool she had in her mind. Yet she took care of her money still; she
carried her basket; death seemed still a long way off, and life was so
strong in her. She craved food and rest—she hastened towards them at
the very moment she was picturing to herself the bank from which she
would leap towards death. It was already five days since she had left
Windsor, for she had wandered about, always avoiding speech or
questioning looks, and recovering her air of proud self-dependence
whenever she was under observation, choosing her decent lodging at
night, and dressing herself neatly in the morning, and setting off on
her way steadily, or remaining under shelter if it rained, as if she
had a happy life to cherish.
And yet, even in her most self-conscious moments, the face was sadly
different from that which had smiled at itself in the old specked
glass, or smiled at others when they glanced at it admiringly. A hard
and even fierce look had come in the eyes, though their lashes were as
long as ever, and they had all their dark brightness. And the cheek was
never dimpled with smiles now. It was the same rounded, pouting,
childish prettiness, but with all love and belief in love departed from
it—the sadder for its beauty, like that wondrous Medusa-face, with the
passionate, passionless lips.
At last she was among the fields she had been dreaming of, on a long
narrow pathway leading towards a wood. If there should be a pool in
that wood! It would be better hidden than one in the fields. No, it was
not a wood, only a wild brake, where there had once been gravel-pits,
leaving mounds and hollows studded with brushwood and small trees. She
roamed up and down, thinking there was perhaps a pool in every hollow
before she came to it, till her limbs were weary, and she sat down to
rest. The afternoon was far advanced, and the leaden sky was darkening,
as if the sun were setting behind it. After a little while Hetty
started up again, feeling that darkness would soon come on; and she
must put off finding the pool till to-morrow, and make her way to some
shelter for the night. She had quite lost her way in the fields, and
might as well go in one direction as another, for aught she knew. She
walked through field after field, and no village, no house was in
sight; but _there_, at the corner of this pasture, there was a break in
the hedges; the land seemed to dip down a little, and two trees leaned
towards each other across the opening. Hetty’s heart gave a great beat
as she thought there must be a pool there. She walked towards it
heavily over the tufted grass, with pale lips and a sense of trembling.
It was as if the thing were come in spite of herself, instead of being
the object of her search.
There it was, black under the darkening sky: no motion, no sound near.
She set down her basket, and then sank down herself on the grass,
trembling. The pool had its wintry depth now: by the time it got
shallow, as she remembered the pools did at Hayslope, in the summer, no
one could find out that it was her body. But then there was her
basket—she must hide that too. She must throw it into the water—make it
heavy with stones first, and then throw it in. She got up to look about
for stones, and soon brought five or six, which she laid down beside
her basket, and then sat down again. There was no need to hurry—there
was all the night to drown herself in. She sat leaning her elbow on the
basket. She was weary, hungry. There were some buns in her
basket—three, which she had supplied herself with at the place where
she ate her dinner. She took them out now and ate them eagerly, and
then sat still again, looking at the pool. The soothed sensation that
came over her from the satisfaction of her hunger, and this fixed
dreamy attitude, brought on drowsiness, and presently her head sank
down on her knees. She was fast asleep.
When she awoke it was deep night, and she felt chill. She was
frightened at this darkness—frightened at the long night before her. If
she _could_ but throw herself into the water! No, not yet. She began to
walk about that she might get warm again, as if she would have more
resolution then. Oh how long the time was in that darkness! The bright
hearth and the warmth and the voices of home, the secure uprising and
lying down, the familiar fields, the familiar people, the Sundays and
holidays with their simple joys of dress and feasting—all the sweets of
her young life rushed before her now, and she seemed to be stretching
her arms towards them across a great gulf. She set her teeth when she
thought of Arthur. She cursed him, without knowing what her cursing
would do. She wished he too might know desolation, and cold, and a life
of shame that he dared not end by death.
The horror of this cold, and darkness, and solitude—out of all human
reach—became greater every long minute. It was almost as if she were
dead already, and knew that she was dead, and longed to get back to
life again. But no: she was alive still; she had not taken the dreadful
leap. She felt a strange contradictory wretchedness and exultation:
wretchedness, that she did not dare to face death; exultation, that she
was still in life—that she might yet know light and warmth again. She
walked backwards and forwards to warm herself, beginning to discern
something of the objects around her, as her eyes became accustomed to
the night—the darker line of the hedge, the rapid motion of some living
creature—perhaps a field-mouse—rushing across the grass. She no longer
felt as if the darkness hedged her in. She thought she could walk back
across the field, and get over the stile; and then, in the very next
field, she thought she remembered there was a hovel of furze near a
sheepfold. If she could get into that hovel, she would be warmer. She
could pass the night there, for that was what Alick did at Hayslope in
lambing-time. The thought of this hovel brought the energy of a new
hope. She took up her basket and walked across the field, but it was
some time before she got in the right direction for the stile. The
exercise and the occupation of finding the stile were a stimulus to
her, however, and lightened the horror of the darkness and solitude.
There were sheep in the next field, and she startled a group as she set
down her basket and got over the stile; and the sound of their movement
comforted her, for it assured her that her impression was right—this
_was_ the field where she had seen the hovel, for it was the field
where the sheep were. Right on along the path, and she would get to it.
She reached the opposite gate, and felt her way along its rails and the
rails of the sheep-fold, till her hand encountered the pricking of the
gorsy wall. Delicious sensation! She had found the shelter. She groped
her way, touching the prickly gorse, to the door, and pushed it open.
It was an ill-smelling close place, but warm, and there was straw on
the ground. Hetty sank down on the straw with a sense of escape. Tears
came—she had never shed tears before since she left Windsor—tears and
sobs of hysterical joy that she had still hold of life, that she was
still on the familiar earth, with the sheep near her. The very
consciousness of her own limbs was a delight to her: she turned up her
sleeves, and kissed her arms with the passionate love of life. Soon
warmth and weariness lulled her in the midst of her sobs, and she fell
continually into dozing, fancying herself at the brink of the pool
again—fancying that she had jumped into the water, and then awaking
with a start, and wondering where she was. But at last deep dreamless
sleep came; her head, guarded by her bonnet, found a pillow against the
gorsy wall, and the poor soul, driven to and fro between two equal
terrors, found the one relief that was possible to it—the relief of
unconsciousness.
Alas! That relief seems to end the moment it has begun. It seemed to
Hetty as if those dozen dreams had only passed into another dream—that
she was in the hovel, and her aunt was standing over her with a candle
in her hand. She trembled under her aunt’s glance, and opened her eyes.
There was no candle, but there was light in the hovel—the light of
early morning through the open door. And there was a face looking down
on her; but it was an unknown face, belonging to an elderly man in a
smock-frock.
“Why, what do you do here, young woman?” the man said roughly.
Hetty trembled still worse under this real fear and shame than she had
done in her momentary dream under her aunt’s glance. She felt that she
was like a beggar already—found sleeping in that place. But in spite of
her trembling, she was so eager to account to the man for her presence
here, that she found words at once.
“I lost my way,” she said. “I’m travelling—north’ard, and I got away
from the road into the fields, and was overtaken by the dark. Will you
tell me the way to the nearest village?”
She got up as she was speaking, and put her hands to her bonnet to
adjust it, and then laid hold of her basket.
The man looked at her with a slow bovine gaze, without giving her any
answer, for some seconds. Then he turned away and walked towards the
door of the hovel, but it was not till he got there that he stood
still, and, turning his shoulder half-round towards her, said, “Aw, I
can show you the way to Norton, if you like. But what do you do gettin’
out o’ the highroad?” he added, with a tone of gruff reproof. “Y’ull be
gettin’ into mischief, if you dooant mind.”
“Yes,” said Hetty, “I won’t do it again. I’ll keep in the road, if
you’ll be so good as show me how to get to it.”
“Why dooant you keep where there’s a finger-poasses an’ folks to ax the
way on?” the man said, still more gruffly. “Anybody ’ud think you was a
wild woman, an’ look at yer.”
Hetty was frightened at this gruff old man, and still more at this last
suggestion that she looked like a wild woman. As she followed him out
of the hovel she thought she would give him a sixpence for telling her
the way, and then he would not suppose she was wild. As he stopped to
point out the road to her, she put her hand in her pocket to get the
six-pence ready, and when he was turning away, without saying
good-morning, she held it out to him and said, “Thank you; will you
please to take something for your trouble?”
He looked slowly at the sixpence, and then said, “I want none o’ your
money. You’d better take care on’t, else you’ll get it stool from yer,
if you go trapesin’ about the fields like a mad woman a-thatway.”
The man left her without further speech, and Hetty held on her way.
Another day had risen, and she must wander on. It was no use to think
of drowning herself—she could not do it, at least while she had money
left to buy food and strength to journey on. But the incident on her
waking this morning heightened her dread of that time when her money
would be all gone; she would have to sell her basket and clothes then,
and she would really look like a beggar or a wild woman, as the man had
said. The passionate joy in life she had felt in the night, after
escaping from the brink of the black cold death in the pool, was gone
now. Life now, by the morning light, with the impression of that man’s
hard wondering look at her, was as full of dread as death—it was worse;
it was a dread to which she felt chained, from which she shrank and
shrank as she did from the black pool, and yet could find no refuge
from it.
She took out her money from her purse, and looked at it. She had still
two-and-twenty shillings; it would serve her for many days more, or it
would help her to get on faster to Stonyshire, within reach of Dinah.
The thought of Dinah urged itself more strongly now, since the
experience of the night had driven her shuddering imagination away from
the pool. If it had been only going to Dinah—if nobody besides Dinah
would ever know—Hetty could have made up her mind to go to her. The
soft voice, the pitying eyes, would have drawn her. But afterwards the
other people must know, and she could no more rush on that shame than
she could rush on death.
She must wander on and on, and wait for a lower depth of despair to
give her courage. Perhaps death would come to her, for she was getting
less and less able to bear the day’s weariness. And yet—such is the
strange action of our souls, drawing us by a lurking desire towards the
very ends we dread—Hetty, when she set out again from Norton, asked the
straightest road northwards towards Stonyshire, and kept it all that
day.
Poor wandering Hetty, with the rounded childish face and the hard,
unloving, despairing soul looking out of it—with the narrow heart and
narrow thoughts, no room in them for any sorrows but her own, and
tasting that sorrow with the more intense bitterness! My heart bleeds
for her as I see her toiling along on her weary feet, or seated in a
cart, with her eyes fixed vacantly on the road before her, never
thinking or caring whither it tends, till hunger comes and makes her
desire that a village may be near.
What will be the end, the end of her objectless wandering, apart from
all love, caring for human beings only through her pride, clinging to
life only as the hunted wounded brute clings to it?
God preserve you and me from being the beginners of such misery!